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Editorial: Obama gun plan faces race against time

USATODAY
8:47 p.m. EST January 16, 2013

The forces of delay-and-defeat are mobilizing.

President Obama, accompanied by Vice President Biden and children who wrote the president about gun violence after last month's massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., signs executive orders on Wednesday.(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

Story Highlights

Powerful interests are already seeking to slow-walk the proposals into oblivion.

The most useful ideas outlined Wednesday will require congressional approval.

f Americans really want reasonable, effective new restrictions on guns, do more than talk.

The sad history of gun politics is that the public zeal for reasonable restrictions spikes after terrible incidents, such as last month's slaughter at a Connecticut elementary school, then fades as time passes and the forces of delay-and-defeat mobilize.

So it's encouraging that President Obama, who expressed little appetite for gun control before he was re-elected, has moved ahead quickly with a sensible "all of the above" approach to curb mass killings and the wider gun-violence problem. Now the challenge facing him and other supporters of new measures is to sustain the pressure in the face of powerful interests seeking to slow-walk the proposals into oblivion.

Obama signed an array of executive orders, but as he acknowledged, the most useful ideas he outlined Wednesday will require congressional approval. These include:

Expanding instant background checks to cover the 40% of gun sales that go unchecked when people buy guns from non-dealers in private sales, at gun shows or on the Internet. The lack of checks in private sales is a huge and dangerous loophole.

Renewing and tightening the expired ban on assault weapons, and on the high-capacity ammunition magazines that let mass killers fire 30 rounds or more before pausing to reload, when they can sometimes be tackled and stopped. The gun lobby says the assault-weapons and magazine ban was ineffective when it was in force from 1994 to 2004, but that's simply wrong. Studies show that the ban reduced gun deaths and steadily cut the number of these dangerous weapons recovered in crime investigations. Since the ban expired, mass killings have increased.

Significantly strengthening the treatment of those with mental illness and the reporting of persons found to be mentally ill to the background-check database, something many states and some federal agencies either ignore or do poorly.

Toughening the outrageously weak gun laws that can make it just a misdemeanor to buy a gun for someone else who couldn't pass a background check. These "straw purchases" are a common way for killers to get guns.

The question is less whether these proposals would do any good, but how many can be enacted.

Expanded background checks have wide public support, but the weapons and magazine ban faces a tough uphill fight, thanks to an extremely organized and effective gun lobby that has cowed a majority of Congress. The other side just isn't as numerous, powerful or well-financed. While the National Rifle Association boasts 4million members, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading NRA opponent, has just 30,000-plus members.

To be sure, even if everything Obama proposed were enacted, gun violence in America would continue. For one thing, too many guns are in private hands — nearly one for each of the 315 million people in the USA — to imagine that any new laws or executive orders will end the killing. Nor can every lunatic and criminal be deterred.

But that's not an excuse for inaction. Obama's ideas would make a difference, especially over time, in reducing the more than 31,000 people who die every year (including more than 2,800 children and teens) through gun murders, gun accidents and gun suicides.

If Americans really want reasonable, effective new restrictions on guns, as polls increasingly suggest, they're going to have to do more than tell that to pollsters or their friends. This will take money, organization and the kind of sustained pressure Congress cannot ignore.